Ron Darling Finds Plenty to Like in Brewer's All-Stars

Bob Wolfley Desk July 12th, 2014

As a New York Mets broadcaster, Ron Darling had an up-close look both at Carlos Gomez andFranciscoRodriguez, two of the Milwaukee Brewers who made the National League roster in the All-Star Game.

Darling is set to call the St. Louis Cardinals at Brewers game Sunday on TBS for a national television audience. He will work the game with Milwaukee native Ernie Johnson.

In his midseason awards, Darling picked Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy as the NL MVP and Ron Roenicke NL manager of the year.

Darling made those choices before the Brewers fell into a 1-10 rut going into the weekend, but he said in a telephone interview he doesn't take anything back.

"Every team has a losing streak," Darling said. "I don't care if it's a team that wins 100 games. Every team seems to go through that phase....When all is said and done, the Brewers have been the best story in baseball, like Pittsburgh was last year."

Darling recalls Gomez's rookie season in the majors, 2007 with the Mets.

"When I first saw him, I thought he was one of the greatest athletes I've ever seen in a baseball uniform," Darling said. "Very (Yasiel) Puig-like. He was wet behind the ears. Definitely was a greenhorn. But the talent was evident from Day 1....If he had grown up on Tobacco Road he would have been a point guard for UNC. If he had grown up in Texas, he would have been a running back at the University of Texas. He could have been anything. If he had chosen track and field he might have been an Alberto Juantorena. That's how magnificent an athlete he was."

Darling said he admires the way Gomez has taken charge of his talent, taken control of his career, taken ownership of his aggressiveness at the plate.

"It's not even the coaches or anyone's fault — no one tries to get a player and teach him incorrectly, everyone is trying to help the player," Darling said. "But sometimes when people try to help a player, they are really hurting a player.

"I'm proud of him because he took ownership of his career. It wasn't going where he wanted it to go. He said if I'm going to go down, I'm going to go down with the way I think I can play. He did it and changed everyone's perception of him. It takes a strong kid to do that. He's not from this country. You feel like everyone else has the answers and you don't. He was strong-willed enough."

Darling said he is not surprised by the stunning resurgence of Rodriguez this year.

"Frankie has an inner toughness that you don't teach," Darling said. "The reasons he has been so successful, from the day he came up and caught fire for the 2002 Angels, he just has that it factor that they can't teach.

"When things get toughest — Frankie is 6-foot tall or so — he grows to about 6-4. He is that kind of athlete and pitcher. There is a lot of fight in him. I appreciate the competitive nature of what he does. I'm less surprised that he has caught fire again only because you knew he was a survivor. You knew he would find a way to be successful. He's a leader. He's a guy who has no problem wearing a target."

What will the absence of catcher Yadier Molina mean to the Cardinals' chances of returning to the postseason?

"I could make the argument that of all the players in baseball, the most missed on any team would be Molina with the Cardinals," Darling said. "They have not hit like the way they hit last year. No one has in the history of the game. If they can pick up their hitting a little bit, maybe pound the baseball around a little bit, they'll survive until he comes back."

Alex Rodriguez is the main focus of a new book released this month, "Blood Sport," by Tim Elfrink andGus Garcia-Roberts.

The subtitle of the 461-page work gives you the gist: "Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseball's Steroid Era."

But there is a good measure of focus on the saga of Ryan Braun's connection to Biogenesis and fall from grace. Much of what is written about Braun has been reported before, but there is at least one interesting nugget.

Ralph Sasson, a former friend of Braun's, was for a time part of the inner circle who challenged the manner in which Braun's urine sample was handled when he tested positive for a banned substance.

Braun reportedly claimed to some other players that the sample collector, Dino Laurenzi Jr., was a Chicago Cubs fan and an anti-Semite.

"In an interview for this book, Braun's childhood friend Sasson took reluctant credit for those claims," the authors write. "He said that, upon being given Laurenzi's name by Braun soon after the Brewers star learned of the failed test, he found two pieces of information on the urine collector's Facebook page. One: Yes, Laurenzi was a Cubs fan, says Sasson. Two: He was a member of a Seventh-day Adventist congregation. Sasson says he told Braun that there had been some history of anti-Semitism in that faith. 'I told him to take it with a grain of salt,' says Sasson. 'But he ran with it.'"

Last week, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter asked Laurenzi about that passage in the book. Laurenzi said in a text that he is Catholic and not a Seventh-day Adventist. Laurenzi declined further comment.

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